Identity, Credibility, and Trust in Social Networking Sites: Old Issues, New Mechanisms, and Current Challenges for Privacy and Security

Over recent years, the notions of identity, credibility and trust in digital contexts have been gaining renewed interest from scholars in different fields (from social studies to engineering and computer science), especially for their consequences for privacy and security. Emerging and urgent questions are: What does the management of online personal data entail? How much personal information are we entitled to share with others? What measures do people usually adopt to protect their identity and privacy? Are they always aware of the risks they may run? What consequences may emerge in the long term if cautions are ignored? These are some of the questions that should be addressed by users, experts and scholars engaged with digital environments, especially social networking sites. This chapter focuses on these issues trying to provide a wide overview of the current literature on identity, credibility and trust, and their implications for privacy and security, from the perspective of social and behavioral sciences. Some measures provided by experts on how to protect against the most common security and privacy threats are also outlined.